Last Updated on May 29, 2025 by Dave Farquhar
Game designer Danielle Bunten Berry was born February 19, 1949. Her best game was called M.U.L.E., a multiplayer turn-based strategy game in a sci-fi setting originally developed on the Atari 800 and then ported to other systems like the Commodore 64, MSX 2, IBM PC, and, eventually, the Nintendo NES. It was one of Electronic Arts‘ debut five titles.
M.U.L.E. gameplay
Set on the fictional planet Irata, which is Atari spelled backward, four players compete in M.U.L.E. in an exercise in supply and demand economics. I know, it sounds like weed-out Economics 101, but trust me, they made it fun. Computer NPC opponents automatically take any player slots not filled by a human. Players choose the race of their colonist, with each race having certain advantages and disadvantages that the player can incorporate into their strategy. But while the object of the game is to compete to amass the largest amount of wealth, you can’t play total cutthroat. At least to a small extent, the players must also cooperate for the survival of the colony.
Unusual for a video game, M.U.L.E. has no shooting. Berry refused to incorporate guns into the game, which caused a later version for the Sega Genesis to be cancelled in 1993.
Multiplayer gaming in 1983
Four players can play with joysticks on an Atari 400 or 800. On other platforms, players share controllers and/or use the keyboard. It’s still a fun game on any platform, but most fun on an early Atari. If you want to experience the pinnacle of 1983 gaming, get an Atari 800, four joysticks, a copy of M.U.L.E., and invite two or three friends over. You can get modern gamepads if you or some friends find them more comfortable to use. They aren’t period correct but if they make the game experience more pleasant, go for it. An S-Drive Max or Fujinet isn’t period correct either but is more convenient than dealing with a real floppy drive and disks.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great game on the other platforms too. But playing with three other players is a treat.
What is a M.U.L.E.?
Players compete by acquiring and using machines called Multiple Use Labor Elements, or M.U.L.E.s, to develop and harvest resources from their real estate. They can choose to have their M.U.L.E. harvest Energy, Food, Smithore (the material M.U.L.E.s are made from), and Crystite (a valuable mineral). Players must balance supply and demand of these elements, buying what they need and selling what they don’t. Players may exploit or create shortages by refusing to sell to other players or to the game’s store. Shortages raise the price of the resource on the following turns. The game allows collusion between players to rig prices.
Resource handling
Crystite is the one commodity that is not influenced by supply and demand considerations, because players sell it off-world. This resource allows a player to maximize production without fear of having too much supply for the demand.
Each resource is required to do certain things on each turn. For instance, if a player is short on Food, there is less time to take one’s turn. If a player is short on Energy, some land plots won’t produce any output. Smithore shortages raise the price of M.U.L.E.s and reduces the supply of new ones.
Periodic random events affect gameplay such as runaway M.U.L.E.s, sunspot activity, theft by space pirates, and meteorites with potentially destructive and beneficial effects. Favorable random events almost never happen to the player currently in first place. Unfavorable events never happen to the player in last place. Similarly, when two players want to buy a resource at the same price, the player in the losing position automatically wins. Players also can hunt the mountain wampus for a cash reward as a random event.
The random events can help a struggling player stay in the game, contributing to the fun of the gameplay.
Critical acclaim
M.U.L.E. received almost universal critical acclaim in 1983 and consistently makes lists of the greatest video games of all time, but only sold 30,000 copies in its original form. I think the cover did a poor job of selling the game. You couldn’t tell from the game’s cover art what the game was about.
I also think its 1983 release date hurt it. The home computer market was half the size in 1983 as it was in 1984. Had it been released a year later, I think it would have sold much better. Ozark Softscape’s second game for EA, 1984’s Seven Cities of Gold, sold 100,000 copies.
Danielle Bunten Berry and Ozark Softscape
Ozark Softscape was the original developer of M.U.L.E., a team of Danielle Bunten Berry, her brother Bill Bunten, Jim Rushing, and Alan Watson. Ozark was run out of Berry’s basement in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Berry was married three times and had three children, a daughter and two sons. Berry lived as a man, under the name Daniel Bunten, until 1992, so most of her game credits came under the name Dan Bunten. After a third divorce, Berry transitioned to living as a woman and underwent sex reassignment surgery in November 1992. Berry died of lung cancer on July 3, 1998, aged 49, much too young.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.